Is the God of the Bible loving? - Head to Head debate

[OnceConvinced]

I notice that the moderators have not yet started a thread for people to comment on the debate going on between myself and Drs. As this is my first official head-to-head debate, I would love to hear any comments any of you have who happen to be following our debate

From what I understand, Drs and I will not be permitted to comment on this thread.

(Is this ok Confused? And have I put this in the right place?)

[OnceConvinced]

duplicate post

[Nilloc James]

Don't double post.

/jk

Very interesting read although I personally feel that once convinced opening argument wins hard. Even though that makes no grammatical sense.

[HelloDollyLlama]

No God could claim to be loving and merciful, and then give us mosquitos, flies, cockroaches, fleas, locusts, ants, bedbugs and boll weevils. And of course rats.

And the viruses for influenza, HIV, polio, foot and mouth, cervical cancer, chickenpox, herpes, Ebola, bird flu, smallpox, hepatitis, yellow fever, dengue, measles, rabies, meningitis and Reye syndrome.

And the bacteria for tuberculosis, bubonic plague, cholera, salmonella, typhus, diphtheria, syphilis, leprosy, anthrax, tetanus, botulism and Chlamydia.

And the potato famine spore, Multiple sclerosis and ALS. And congenital defects.

And lymphomas, sarcomas, melanomas, carcinomas, leukemias and blastomas.

And floods, droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, fires, avalanches, volcanic eruptions and blizzards.

No God who loved mankind would work so hard, to kill so many millions of innocent people, in so many cruel ways.

Incidentally, 9 million children under five died last year, and another 9-10 million will die this year. Because God loves the little chillun so much. And their parents.

Thus demonstrating that the loving God of the Bible is either a liar, or a lie.


If you read the Bible from the beginning, as a mere work of literature, you find immediately that the most interesting character is…Jehovah. This character is childish, cruel, capricious, jealous and emotionally insecure, constantly demanding love and attention, imposing impossible demands, and throwing appalling tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. He’s Scarlett O’Hara with a taste for mass murder.

Jehovah plants the tree of knowledge right in front of Adam and Eve, instills in them an incredible hunger for that very thing – knowledge. And when they reach out for it, just as he wanted, he condemns them – and all their descendants -- to a lifetime of toil and pain.

Jehovah demands the unconditional love of Abraham, insists he kill his own child as proof of his love, and changes his mind at the last minute. Jehovah later allows Jephtha to sacrifice his daughter to prove his devotion to God.

Jehovah demands that Moses take on the impossible task of building the nation of Israel out of a bunch of slaves. Moses achieves the impossible, over decades of backbreaking work. Then, fed up by 50 years of abuse from Jehovah, he has one moment of doubt. One moment in which his faith – not even his love – of God wavered just a bit. And for that, Jehovah banned him from the very country he created.

And what he did to the Egyptians! Plague of locusts, famine, killing all the children….We’re going to make that our holy day in the spring – celebrating all those dead Egyptian babies!

Look at this guy Noah! I’ll force him to do some impossible stuff, like he’s pledging the world’s worst fraternity – build a boat the size of a football field, and fill it with every animal in the world! And for a finale, I will kill every man, woman and child on earth, because they didn’t love me enough. Look at all the water!

Then I’ll wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah for dessert.

Speaking of obedience, how about Job? Jehovah takes his most obedient servant and destroys his whole life, on a bar bet with Satan. Like the Duke brothers in "Trading Places", ruining their own nephew's life on a one-dollar bet. And when Job has the nerve to complain, Jehovah says "I'm God and you're not, so screw you. -- And I still expect you to worship me next Saturday." Such are the wages of obedience. What's the point, if you get screwed anyway?

Jehovah treated his chosen people worse than the heathens. He threw the Jews into Egypt as slaves, exiled them in Babylon, brought in the Romans to conquer them, destroy their temple and scatter them across Europe for 2000 years of persecution, and, oh yeah, the Holocaust.

The Jews who obeyed the Torah got hosed. Pagan idolators who did everything imaginable to break God's laws, like the Romans, the Huns, the Goths, and then the feudal lords of the Middle Ages -- they got to conquer the world. A little practical joke on the "chosen people"? Like Tevye the dairyman said -- yeah, Lord, I know we're the Chosen People, but could you choose someone else for a change?

And people make this repellent fictional character the center of their lives, loving him above all?


This taps into the related issue of religious gullibility.

The greatest empire of all, Rome, swears loyalty to this God, under Constantine. Instead of looking after his people, God allows the empire to collapse into a century of civil war and then destruction by hordes of pagans who ain’t never heard of this God. And God’s people stuck with him.

Let’s see, the Crusades. God’s self-appointed spokesmen told all Europe that God wanted the Holy Land in Christian hands, and that God would never allow his people to lose if you led an army to retake it. Six or seven armies God's people sent there, and God abandoned them. They even led an “army� of thousands of children to their deaths. And God’s people still stuck with the Man Upstairs.

The Black Death. God sent a pestilence to destroy Europe. 50 million God-fearing Christians, a small army of priests, prayed to God for mercy, and were slaughtered anyway. And God’s people still stayed with the program.

For 50 years they had a pope in Rome and a pope in France, each insisting that he was infallible and the other was an imposter. A century later their popes indulged in such an appalling pattern of corruption and vice that the Protestant reformation was virtually inevitable. Yet again, rival churches, each claiming that only their church had the true link to the Almighty. Shortly thereafter, Spain’s inquisitors were killing in the thousands, and exterminating hundreds of thousands in the New World. And Gods people stayed with the team. Or, now, teams.

A guy named Galileo proved the Bible wrong; instead of admitting they were wrong, the men of your church threatened him with torture if he didn’t shut up. Later Darwin shot more holes in the Big Book, and explorers from Yuri Gagarin onward saw heaven firsthand, and there was no God there. And through it all, God’s people stuck to him.

God’s spokesmen claim to be the world’s moral authority. So...the Holocaust. Biggest moral issue of the last century. The world waited for the Pope to denounce the Holocaust. Nada. This was all while their priests were molesting generation after generation of altar boys and schoolchildren.

Their religious leaders were caught in one sexual peccadillo after another. Bakker, Swaggart...And they stuck with them.

Oral Roberts capped his lifelong career of lies by claiming that if the God’s People didn’t give him eight million dollars, God would kill him. The God people not only believed him, but actually gave him the money.

Their religious leaders told them that abortion was murder, and that if they gave money to them and to the Republican party, it would be outlawed. They gave them hundreds of millions of dollars, and they never came close to banning abortion. And now they’re planning to hornswoggle the faithful with yet another doomed holy war against gays.

So how many times does Lucy pull away the football and watch Charlie Brown fall on his ass, before Charlie Brown gets the message?

[Exile]

Damn, I wanted to say most of that stuff.

Well.. In my religion christian "God" didn't even make humans, and we believe he's evil (reasons posted by the person above). Satan/Lucifer/Ea/Enki (ancient Sumerian God) made Humans, and christianity is a program to rid humanity of all spiritual knowledge. When you look at it, everything comes into place.

[McCulloch]

In my religion christian "God" didn't even make humans, and we believe he's evil (reasons posted by the person above). Satan/Lucifer/Ea/Enki (ancient Sumerian God) made Humans, and christianity is a program to rid humanity of all spiritual knowledge. When you look at it, everything comes into place.

Frankly, your Enki god has not been that successful. The majority of his creations think that he either does not exist or is the personification of evil.

[Exile]

Christians killed all of the Gentiles, how would the religion survive?

[Goat]

Christians killed all of the Gentiles, how would the religion survive?

Christians are Gentiles.. so your statement doesn't quite make sense.